1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for treating elongate textile materials such as continuous fabric tapes including slide fastener chains or stringer tapes, webs, ribbons, fiber strands, fiber yarns, etc. through a processing step such as dyeing, bleaching, scouring, glazing or alkaline weight-reduction.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the manufacture of textile articles, an elongate textile material is subjected to a series of treatments including dyeing. In general, there are known three dyeing methods or systems, i.e. the cheese-dying, beam-dyeing and continuous dyeing. One example of the beam-dyeing is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 58-5301, in which a treatment liquid is circulated by a pump to first flow into the interior space of a perforated hollow cylindrical beam, then penetrate successively through perforations or pores in the beam and an elongate textile material wound around the outer wall of the beam, and finally return to the pump.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 52-8867 discloses an example of the continuous-dyeing system in which an elongate textile material of polyester is continuously fed through a series of treatment stations including a dye bath for dye application, a steam box for steam-heating, a dry box for drying, a baking box for color development, and water washing baths for finishing.
The foregoing known dyeing systems are particularly suitable for the mass production of textile articles but they do not show any commercial success when used for the production of various kinds of articles in small quantities at a relatively short production cycle. Another problem is that the color reproducibility between different batches or lots of treated articles is unstable.